The Grand Duchess of Nowhere

Laurie Graham

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Quercus

This edition first published in 2014 by
Quercus Editions Ltd
55 Baker Street
7th Floor, South Block
London
W1U 8EW

Copyright © 2014 by Laurie Graham

The moral right of Laurie Graham to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Family tree by Jeff Edwards

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Ebook ISBN 978 1 78206 972 0
Print ISBN 978 1 78206 970 6

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

You can find this and many other great books at
www.quercusbooks.co.uk

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I can’t say I remember the first time I saw Cyril Vladimirovich. Somehow he’s always been around, just one of our many cousins. But I do know the first time I noticed him. It was at Aunt Aline’s funeral. That was 1891, so we were both nearly fifteen and he was dressed in his new midshipman’s uniform, back straight, eyes front.

It was a long way to travel, from Coburg to Russia, for the funeral of an aunt we’d hardly known, but Mother had her reasons. My sister Missy was sixteen so it was time for her to enter the parade ring and catch the eye of a good husband and, as Mother said, everyone who was anyone would be in Petersburg for Aunt Aline’s obsequies. We’re supposed to call it Petrograd now, not Petersburg. Too German-sounding, you see, now we’re at war. Petrograd. I don’t think I shall ever get accustomed to that.

Aunt Aline had died in childbirth. After childbirth, to be quite accurate. She was safely delivered of her second child, a baby boy, and then she just fell asleep and didn’t wake up. Grand Duke Uncle Paul was beside himself with grief, left alone with two little ones to raise.

I was so innocent then, about babies and husbands and the facts of life, but my sister Missy thought she knew how it all worked.

She said, ‘Ducky, it’s too horrendous. The baby comes out of your BTM and if it’s a very big baby, you just go pop.’

So I went to Aunt Aline’s funeral rather under the impression that she might have burst, like a rubber balloon, but when I saw her in her casket she looked perfectly lovely and peaceful and not at all deflated. Grand Duke Uncle Paul cried and cried and seemed to want to jump into the grave and join her until Mother took him by the elbow and gave him A Talking To. She saw it as her duty. Mother was Uncle Paul’s big sister.

After the tragedy of Aunt Aline, Missy swore she was never going to have babies. I must remind her of that next time I see her. If I ever see her again. As I recall things, at the time I was more interested in how the baby got
in
than how it got out.

Missy said, ‘Oh, that’s disgusting too. The man does The Thing. He makes a pee pee inside you and it turns into a baby. But first you have to have a wedding.’

It all sounded improbable to me but Missy insisted she had it from no lesser authority than one of our daily maids when we lived in England, at Devonport. Pa was in the Navy then, in the years before he had to be a Grand Duke and rule Coburg. But what ignoramuses Missy and I were. Mother thought it was better that way, to enter marriage unburdened by gruesome information. Why lose sleep, after all, over the unavoidable?

Aunt Aline’s funeral wasn’t the first time we’d been to Russia. Mother took us as often as she could, usually just Missy and me. Our baby sisters stayed at home with their nurses. Mother wished us to grow up knowing our Russian relatives even though she seemed not to like many of them. She never shrank from unpleasant duties. I think, though, the principal reason she took us to Russia so frequently was to annoy Grandma Queen, who had the lowest possible opinion of the Romanovs and all things Russian.

Some ladies like to press flowers or do crewelwork. Mother’s favourite pastime was infuriating Grandma Queen. Whenever
we were obliged to go to Windsor or to Osborne House she brought extra supplies of her black cigarettes, so as always to be seen smoking, and she’d pile on her jewels, far too many and too brilliant for a simple English house party, but she loved to remind Grandma of her rank and her superior jewellery. Mother, you see, is the daughter of a Russian Emperor. Grandma Queen was merely the daughter of a Duke of Kent. The more I think of it, the more certain I am the only reason Grandma had herself declared Empress of India was to try and overhaul Mother. They never actually quarrelled. Well, hardly ever. It was more a silent battle of wills and rank, and I will say Mother could out-scowl Grandma Queen any day.

I adored our visits to Russia even when they were supposed to be sad occasions. We seemed to attend more funerals than weddings, but even a Russian funeral was superior to anything in grey old England or stodgy old Coburg. Gold was golder and red seemed redder in Russia. Emperor Uncle Sasha rumbled about like a friendly bear and Empress Aunt Minnie was quicker and prettier and better dressed than any of our English aunts.

So, as I said, I began to notice Cyril at Aunt Aline’s funeral and he certainly noticed me. I could tell by the way he made such a display of ignoring me. Mother got wind of my interest though and soon trampled on my dreams.

‘You can forget Cyril Vladimirovich,’ she said. ‘Romanovs do not marry their first cousins.’

That was a sly dig at Grandma Queen who thought it the most sensible thing in the world for cousins to marry. She believed that it somehow enriched the blood and she clung to the idea long after the evidence seemed to indicate quite the opposite. We’re hardly the healthiest family. We have the bleeding disease for one thing. I don’t know of any other family that has it.

So Cyril Vladimirovich, who was turning out to be tall and broad-shouldered and rather handsome, was not even to be considered as a future husband and, in any event, the question of a husband for me wasn’t uppermost in Mother’s mind. Missy had to be matched first and Grandma Queen was promoting the cause of another cousin, Georgie Wales. Grandma Queen spent many happy hours studying our family tree and designing matches between her grandchildren.

Georgie Wales was a second-born son so just like Pa he wasn’t likely to be required for the succession. He’d been allowed to join the Navy.

‘And what could be more fitting,’ Grandma said, ‘than for a Royal sailor to marry a Royal sailor’s daughter?’

We actually knew Georgie Wales quite well. He’d served under Pa’s command when we were stationed in Malta. Missy had no particular objection to him, but Mother wouldn’t countenance the match. She knew what it was to be a Navy wife, posted here, there and everywhere. She said it would be a terrible waste of Missy’s great beauty. I think she rather held Georgie’s stamp collecting against him too, though I’m sure there are worse vices in a husband.

Mother had her heart set on a German Crown Prince for Missy and after going through the
Almanach
very thoroughly she settled on Nando Hohenzollern. He seemed pleasant enough, though very bashful. How mistaken first impressions can be. Everyone said Nando was very keen on Missy but you would never have known it. His eyes were always directed at the floor. The only point Missy found against him was the unfortunate size and set of his ears but that was trumped by the fact that he was his Uncle Carol’s heir. Romania had a rather threadbare line of succession and had had to call in Hohenzollern reinforcements. If Missy married Nando, it meant she’d be Queen of Romania someday. Of course as things
turned out Eddie Wales expired quite unexpectedly which bumped Georgie up the succession. So if Missy had married him, she’d have ended up Queen of England. One simply never knows.

Anyway, Nando bid for Missy’s hand and won it. Grandma Queen said if Missy must make such a mistaken match she had better at least be
properly
married at Windsor. Mother said, over her dead body. Missy would be married in Coburg. And then, after a start had been made on preparations, Nando’s family announced that we couldn’t possibly expect a Hohenzollern to traipse all the way to Coburg to be married. The bride must go to them. And so we struggled through snowdrifts to Sigmaringen, Missy and Nando were married in the Hohenzollern chapel, so cold you could see their breath as they made their vows, and then they left at once for Romania.

Missy and I had never been apart before. Even when we had scarlatina or the measles, we’d always done it together. Parting from her was too awful. We all went to the station to wave them off. Missy looked pale but very beautiful in her new fox collar, Nando’s considerable ears were bright red and Mother cried, which I thought was pretty galling. The whole affair was of her creation, after all.

And the last thing Missy whispered to me was, ‘You’re next.’

We are a vast tribe. One winter afternoon I tried to count my first cousins, living and dead. I got to forty-seven and then someone brought in tea, so I gave up.

Mother was the only girl in a large family of Romanov boys. Pa was Prince Alfred, number three in Grandma Queen’s brood of nine. He was Duke of Edinburgh, Admiral of the Fleet and Commander in Chief at Plymouth until one of his uncles died of an unmentionable condition and we were obliged to go to Coburg so Pa could become its new Grand Duke. It wasn’t a job he’d particularly expected and I believe he’d have much preferred to remain in the Navy.

Mother and Pa had five children. Affie was the only boy. I’ll tell you about him presently. After Affie came Missy, then me, then Sandra and Baby Bee. Some fathers enjoy life in a houseful of petticoats, but not Pa. He was perpetually cross. Mother’s way was to ignore it – even when he threw her copy of
Washington Square
at the cat – or to leave the room with more gaiety than was natural in the circumstances, which made him crosser than ever. I have some experience of husbands now myself. I could never emulate Mother. Any husband who throws a book at my cat may expect a cigar box by return of serve.

So, with Missy settled, it came my turn to be found a husband,
and Grandma Queen and Mother, in agreement for probably the first time in their lives, had already decided who it should be. Ernie Hesse. I was rather surprised. First of all, he was just as much my cousin as Cyril Vladimirovich.

Mother said, ‘Don’t quibble with me, Ducky.’

I suppose you may wonder at my name. By baptism, I’m Victoria Melita but everyone calls me Ducky. They always have. No one can remember why. Pa swore that Mother started it and Mother denies all responsibility. I don’t care. I’m perfectly happy to be Ducky.

So Ernie Hesse was proposed as a possible husband, in spite of being a first cousin.

Mother said, ‘There are other considerations.’

She had her eye on his Grand Duchy.

The idea of Ernie for a husband wasn’t an unpleasant one. Not at all. He was the greatest japester and terrifically good-looking, handsomer even than Cyril Vladimirovich. But I’d never thought of Ernie as husband material. If I’d thought of him at all, it was as a mad cousin who refused to grow up.

I said, ‘Has Ernie asked for me?’

Mother said, ‘Asked for you? What are you, a salt cellar? He doesn’t yet have permission to ask for you.’

‘Will he be given permission?’

‘That is for me to decide and your father to give. You ask too many questions. It isn’t becoming and you’d do well to break yourself of the habit before you marry. No husband likes to be quizzed.’

A kind of balance sheet was being drawn up. Ernie had just succeeded as Grand Duke of Hesse. He had a decent palace in Darmstadt and several country houses, all with good parks. On the other hand, the Hesses were not thought to have any jewels except perhaps some mediocre diamonds parsed out among Ernie’s sisters. They didn’t enter into Mother’s calculations.

She said, ‘Whomever you marry, you can always depend on Mother for your diamonds.’

We were summoned to Osborne House, directly after Easter. Ernie had already arrived.

‘Hello, Ducky, dear,’ he said. ‘I’m under orders from GQ. I have to behave sensibly, act my age and converse with you soberly.’

He had ravishing blue eyes.

He said, ‘Under no circumstances am I to act the fool, play pranks or by any means amuse you.’

Then he squirted me with water from the joke daisy he was wearing in his lapel.

We went for a walk, the first of many, many walks that week though it rained every day. Grandma Queen encouraged it. She thought every stroll must bring us closer to an announcement. She also liked us to sit with her for an hour each afternoon – ‘my handsomest grandchildren’, she called us. Those afternoons were a terrible strain because Ernie would do everything in his power to make me laugh.

The problem was Beppo, Grandma’s white Pomeranian. Beppo was reputed to suffer from digestive disorders but Ernie planted the idea that Beppo might not always be to blame for those soft little explosions and the rich smell that followed.

‘Observation,’ he said. ‘Beppo seems a civil enough mutt to me. The kind of doggie chap who’d have the decency to step out of the room. I’m afraid I think GQ may be exercising a bit of Royal licence here.’

Ever after that, when the smell occurred, he’d look at me, then at Grandma, then at Beppo, and raise an eyebrow, and I would have to bite hard on the inside of my cheek.

We did talk about marriage, in a roundabout way.

He said, ‘I realise I have to do it one of these days. Keep the Hesse line going and so forth. I just don’t think I’m quite ready.’

He was twenty-four.

He said, ‘Don’t take it personally, Ducky. You’re a terrific girl. But you’re not even seventeen, so I reckon we can drag it out a bit, don’t you?’

It suited me. I really had other things on my mind. Missy had allowed Nando to do The Thing and she was expecting a baby. I was terrified that she’d die, like Aunt Aline. Mother assured me she would go all the way to Romania and take some proper German doctors with her too, to stay by Missy’s side and prevent any such tragedy.

Missy’s condition also distracted Mother from the question of Ernie, for a while.

All she said was, ‘He doesn’t seem very ardent. I hope you haven’t said anything to discourage him?’

I said we were good friends. Well, we were.

‘Friends?’ she said. ‘Friends! What a caution you are. Well, if Ernie doesn’t put in a little more effort I shall look for someone else, when I get back from Romania.’

Ernie was given another chance to declare himself that September, at Balmoral. Pa was going there to shoot grouse and I was to go with him.

‘Now, Ducky,’ Mother said, before I left for Scotland, ‘if you’re offered a saddle horse there’s to be no galloping madly about. A gentle hack is more conducive to conversation. And please, no sitting with your nose in a book either. There’ll be time enough for reading when you’re married and have your confinements. Your job now is to give Ernie a little encouragement. But only a little.’

Ernie actually came to Ballater station to meet us which everyone mistakenly thought was a sign of his blossoming ardour.

‘Welcome to Midge Heaven,’ he said.

‘You should smoke Navy Cut,’ Pa said. ‘Navy Cut keeps the
buggers at bay. Forget those pansy foreign cigarettes. How’s the shooting? Decent bags?’

Ernie couldn’t say. He hadn’t been out with the guns. He was eager to tell me about a new game he’d devised. It was called Tartan Nightmare and the aim was to design ever more hideous Balmoral accommodations.

‘I’ll start,’ he said. ‘A cosy wee nook, north-facing. The walls are covered in Stuart Dress Jaundice, and the upholstery is in Hunting McPuke with bile tassels. I thought it might do nicely for Mr Gladstone. Your turn.’

It was a game without winners. Pa didn’t understand it at all.

‘Not been out with the guns!’ he kept saying. ‘How very peculiar.’

There was quite a family gathering, though not everyone was staying at Balmoral. The Uncle Bertie Waleses were down the road at Mar Lodge. Georgie Wales and his new bride, dear May Teck, were at Abergeldie. There was plenty of company. But May Teck informed me that they’d all been warned not to monopolise my time, to give Ernie every courtship opportunity. It became quite embarrassing, worse with every day that passed. Ernie didn’t avoid me, not at all. He just didn’t ask me to marry him.

I began to think there must be something wrong with me. I studied myself in a hand mirror and found quite a number of imperfections. My face is rather long. My complexion has a slightly sallow cast. Then Aunt Louise arrived and weighed up the situation at once.

She said, ‘You’re not the problem, darling. You’re stunning and Ernie needs to grow up.’

Aunt Louise was Pa’s sister. We were supposed not to approve of her and I’m sure if Mother had known she’d be in the Balmoral party, I wouldn’t have been allowed to attend. The charge against
Aunt Louise was that she was over-endowed with an artistic temperament that marriage had done nothing to tame. It can happen in the best of families.

‘No regard for the proprieties,’ Mother said.

We’d been denied any further explanation but Missy’s guess was that Aunt Louise misbehaved with men. After all, if the problem were one of insanity she would have been put away. And being artistic wasn’t in itself a bad thing. We were all encouraged to produce a watercolour or two. We were forced to the conclusion that our aunt received gentlemen callers when her husband wasn’t at home. Missy grew quite excited at the thought of an aunt behaving so outrageously. I just loved the way Aunt Louise narrowed her eyes when she thought someone was talking tosh. Even Grandma Queen.

Aunt Louise was alone at the breakfast table one morning when I went in.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Just the girl I want to talk to. Tell me about the Ernie situation.’

I told her how things stood. Grandma Queen wanted it. Mother wanted it. Ernie wasn’t against it. It just never seemed to progress.

‘And what do you want?’ she said.

Really, I just wanted to go home. I wanted people to stop discussing me.

‘Quite right,’ she said. ‘You’re still so young. What’s the hurry? Where are you in the succession? Absolutely nowhere. Pass the butter dish.’

I said, ‘Ernie’s very nice.’

‘Yes?’ she said. I wasn’t sure she was agreeing with me.

‘The main thing, Ducky,’ she said, ‘is to marry someone you can rub along with. I did. Look, the sky didn’t fall on my head. The ravens haven’t left the Tower.’

Aunt Louise was married to Lorne. He was just a Marquess in those days. Later on he became Duke of Argyll. Now he’s dead.

She was playing with the butter, shaping it into a little human head.

She said, ‘What do you want to do with your life?’

It was a question I’d never considered. Surely we all did what we were ordained to do. The army, in the case of my brother, Affie. Marry suitably, in the case of myself and my sisters.

She said, ‘You’re a bright girl, healthy and able. What are your dreams? What do you hope to achieve?’

Dreams, hopes, achievements. One began to see why Mother avoided Aunt Louise. But there was no escape. It was just me, my aunt and two inscrutable footmen stationed at either end of the sideboard. I felt an obligation to give some kind of answer, and quickly. I told her I hoped to get my three-year-old jumping over poles by the end of the year.

She narrowed her eyes but I believe she was just judging her sculpture.

‘Well, that’s something,’ she said. ‘But you don’t yearn to write books or cross the Sahara desert?’

These were not options I had realised might be open to me, as Aunt Louise understood from my gaping mouth.

‘Those are merely examples I plucked out of the air,’ she said. ‘When I was your age, I’d already decided to be an artist.’

My breakfast kipper lay cooling on the plate. I felt I was a disappointment to my aunt.

‘Some people know at once what they want to do,’ she said. ‘Others take longer. And some, of course, never want to do anything. The main thing is not to tie yourself to a husband before you know. Imagine discovering you have a passion to explore the
Amazon rainforests but you can’t because you’ve previously agreed to be Queen of Romania.’

Which, if nothing else, demonstrated that Aunt Louise was impractical and also, possibly, slightly bonkers. Missy, in a rainforest!

‘And who knows?’ she said. ‘You may end up marrying Ernie anyway. As you say, he’s agreeable company.’

I said, ‘I don’t at all mind waiting. The problem is he hasn’t even asked me.’

‘Heavens, Ducky,’ she said. ‘If he’s the one you want, why don’t you ask him? So? What do you think?’

It was Grandma Queen, to the life, fashioned from best Deeside butter.

I didn’t ask Ernie to marry me. Mother would never have forgiven me. And what if I’d asked him and he’d turned me down? It would have been too humiliating. I decided to try and enjoy what was left of my time at Balmoral and we did have some larks. Ernie wrote a little skit called
Dinnae Gang on the Moor
and we performed it for the tenantry before supper at the Tenants’ Ball. Ernie played the hapless traveller, the Henry Prussias were cast as the innkeeper and his wife, and I was Ghoulish Noises Off. May Teck was supposed to operate the rainbox but Grandma Queen developed a fancy to do that herself and poor May had to content herself with the drumming of coconut-shell hooves. Everyone said it was a triumph.

There was one day when I thought Ernie really was about to propose. He asked me to walk with him down to his mother’s memorial. It was a granite cross, quite overrun with ivy.
Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse. Her name shall live though now she is no more
.

Ernie was only ten when she died, although he was no stranger to death. His elder brother had already passed away. The bleeding
disease. That was why it had fallen to Ernie to become Grand Duke of Hesse.

I asked him what his mother was like.

‘Very lovely,’ he said. ‘Kind and lovely and always busy doing good works. Actually, I hardly remember. But I’m sure she was. Everyone says so.’

We sat for a while listening to the sound of the river and then we both felt chilled and walked on and the moment passed.

He said, ‘You’re very quiet today, Miss Duckydoo. I hope you’re not going all pensive on me. “Pensive” isn’t permitted at Balmoral, don’t you know? Not done at all. It would be like going out to the grouse butts wearing one’s tailcoat.’

Once a week, Ernie and I would go into Ballater to buy butterscotch and packets of Gayetty’s medicated papers for the littlest room – at Balmoral one was only ever given squares of the
Aberdeen Journal
and they were terribly harsh – but one could never just go on an ordinary errand with Ernie. He was always looking for ways to make life more fun. He wore a straw bonnet one time, which looked very puzzling because Ernie had such a splendid moustache, and the next time he dared me to drive the wagonette wearing a pair of his duck trousers and a monocle. His naughtiest jape though was the song he’d composed, a little ditty which he fitted to the tune of
Ode to Joy
.